


Be My Friend

by shadowqueen



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Absent Parents, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 23:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15896634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowqueen/pseuds/shadowqueen
Summary: The story of how Jihyun Kim met Jumin Han.





	Be My Friend

**Author's Note:**

> (Written for VFA Week on Tumblr) I’m not sure if this kind of fic has been done yet, but this is my interpretation of how Jihyun and Jumin met. AKA, the time when little Jumin crashed his car into Jihyun’s house, based on the Day 2 chat in Another Story. I couldn’t find how old they actually were when they met, so I just guessed.

In a small corner of the sitting room of his house, Jihyun pretended he was somewhere else. He’d built a fort out of cushions and blankets and chairs, leaving a small opening at the side to let enough light in to see. Inside, stuffed bears he’d smuggled out of his room were gathered together on the floor, and he sat in front of them, counting each off by name like a teacher taking roll call. It was much cozier in this space than anywhere else, so this was where he felt most comfortable simply because it was little enough and just right for him.

Everything seems too big when you’re a child. That was how Jihyun often felt in his house. The ceilings were too high, the walls too far apart, the corridors too long. Maybe he’d notice it less if he weren’t almost always alone, but his father was on another business trip and school was out for the term, and he had no one to play with. There was an awful lot of space to be occupied by only one small person, and he didn’t exactly count his nanny because she didn’t live here. Then again, his nanny seemed to be at the house more often than his own father, and Jihyun would wonder if he should count her after all… Still, even with  _two_  people, one full grown and one not-so grown, the house was entirely too large and empty for its own good.

Jihyun didn’t know where his nanny was now. The last time he saw her that day was in the dining room for breakfast, and once they were done eating, she cleaned up after him and told him, “Don’t get into trouble,” before she left him. She told him that every day, even though Jihyun never once got in trouble in his seven years of life. She might not be too pleased to know he’d disturbed the usual orderliness of the sitting room to make a pillow fort, but he planned to return everything carefully to their proper places after he was done playing and before she could find out and scold him about it.

Today his fort was a classroom, and Jihyun was the teacher, lecturing the huddled group of bear students about how to use a camera. He did this often, recreating certain areas of his house in his imagination and playing make-believe. He held his camera aloft—it was a little, simple thing his father gave him recently—and demonstrated how each part worked and how to take a picture. He wasn’t an expert at it himself, but he found that teaching his imaginary students was useful in his own learning. Besides, it was better than spending all day doing nothing with no one.

One of the students asked Jihyun why the camera made a snapping noise every time he took a picture, so Jihyun was sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing with the camera shutter to investigate the answer. He pressed the button several times and noticed black shutters closing and opening behind the front lens. He liked the sound of them moving so much that he pressed the release a few more times just to listen to it…

_BOOM!_

Jihyun’s camera dropped from his hands. The walls of the house shook. The sudden sound had snapped him out of the imaginary classroom, and he jolted up onto his feet in alarm. His head bumped against the cushions above him, knocking the whole structure down, and him along with it.

What was that? Buried in a messy pile of pillows and blankets, Jihyun darted his eyes across the room. He was frozen for a few seconds, waiting for another crash or sound, but there was only silence. Jihyun called his nanny’s name but received no response. Had she caused the sound? Was she even in the house?

The crash seemed to have come from somewhere outside. Jihyun untangled himself from the pile and rushed to the window and tried to catch a glimpse of what may have caused it. His only clue was a plume of gray smoke wafting from around the corner of the outside wall. He gasped. Was something on fire?

Sometimes a child’s innocent curiosity supersedes common sense, especially when common sense would have told him to call the emergency hotline or at least try to find his nanny. But he was too young to feel comfortable using a phone, and he was starting to believe he was truly alone in the house anyway, so he did the only thing he could do. He pushed himself away from the window and returned to the collapsed fort to dig out his camera, tossing away pillows and bears with no regard to where they landed. Once he found his camera, he went outside.

By the time he neared the corner of the house, the smoke had thickened, and Jihyun had to cover his mouth and nose with his hand. The smell reminded him of one time when he went to the airport to say goodbye to his father before a business trip. The family car had broken down on the way there. His father berated the driver for not checking that the vehicle was in good condition beforehand, blaming him for possibly missing the flight. Jihyun remembered getting out of the car quietly to watch the smoke steam out of the engine. He’d been secretly glad that his father wouldn’t be going away yet again, but he was later disappointed when he ended up catching the flight after all.

Shaking the memory from his mind, Jihyun rounded the corner slowly, his footsteps soft and light so as to not alert whoever was there, especially if they were a stranger. He gripped his camera, ready to take a quick snapshot in case he needed to run away and call authorities.

He didn’t know what he expected to find once the smoke cleared, but it certainly wasn’t  _this_.

A small silver car was smashed up against the house’s wall.  _Really_  small. Small enough that Jihyun himself could sit in the driver seat and see comfortably over the steering wheel. Sure enough, a boy about his size was now climbing out of vehicle because a white balloon had popped out of the steering wheel, forcing him out.

The boy’s black hair was only slightly unkempt as his feet touched the ground, but his face was smooth and uncharacteristically unbothered for someone who’d just crashed his…toy car? The car was too big to be considered a toy, but much too little to be a grown-up car. It wasn’t even made out of plastic like a lot of the child-size toy cars Jihyun had seen in stores. This one looked like someone had used a shrink ray on a real car, if that was possible. Even more odd, if Jihyun hadn’t been standing only a few feet away, he would’ve thought the boy was a shrunken version of a grown-up himself, too. He wore a black suit and tie, reminding Jihyun of how his father dressed every morning before work, and he even had one of those portable telephones like his father had. Jihyun didn’t know children could look like this, but somehow it seemed to fit the boy well.

The boy dialed a number on the phone—a real phone, not a toy—and proceeded to have a conversation with someone on the other end. “Hello. This is Jumin Han. Yes, Jumin Han, Chairman Han’s son… Yes, I’m seven years old. No, this isn’t a prank. Why would I prank you? Stop talking and listen to me—”

The entire scenario was so absurd, even to a child as young as Jihyun, that he had to document it. He raised his camera and pointed it at the smooth-talking little boy and the fuming wrecked car. When the scene looked nice enough through the viewfinder, Jihyun clicked the shutter release.

“I’ve just crashed my car into my neighbor’s wall,” the boy continued, calm as ever, “and I’d like to know what is the typical range of compensation for such an offense.”

Wait, neighbor? Now the boy’s name rang a bell. Jumin Han. This was the son of his neighbor Chairman Han. Even though he remembered his father mentioning there was a boy his age living next door, Jihyun had never met him, or seen him, for that matter.

Jihyun walked a few steps closer to the wreckage. It looked really bad up close. The car’s front end was entirely crushed, and there was a cracked dent in the wall.

“Are you okay?” said Jihyun. Even though Jumin had appeared to come out of it without a scratch, he had to ask, just to be sure.

Jumin glanced at him. His eyes widened, as if surprised to see someone there.

“Hold on,” Jumin said to the phone. “I’ll call you back.”

He hung up and slipped the phone into his pocket. He looked at Jihyun again and offered his right hand in greeting. “Yes, I’m okay, thank you. You must be my neighbor. I’m Jumin Han.”

Jihyun felt odd about shaking hands with a boy his age; it seemed like a gesture that only grown-ups did, but he lowered his camera and shook Jumin’s hand anyway. “I’m Jihyun. Jihyun Kim.”

“You’re taking pictures of the damage,” Jumin said. “That’s smart. My father told me that when car accidents happen, the person whose fault it is always tries to blame the other person. So having visual evidence is a good defense. But you don’t have to worry. I won’t try to scam you. I take full responsibility for my actions.”

He didn’t only dress like a grown-up, Jihyun thought, he also  _talked_  like one. Jihyun could only figure out the meaning of half the things he’d just said. He didn’t understand why grown-ups who drove cars would try to blame something they did on someone else, but he guessed it wasn’t much different from how children tried to blame others in school so the teacher wouldn’t get mad at them.

“It’s fine,” Jihyun said. “You didn’t hurt anyone.” That was all that mattered, really.

“That’s true.” Jumin looked back at the wreckage. “The only thing that got hurt was my car. My father gave it to me as a gift, so he won’t be too happy about this.”

“Your father gave you this?” Jihyun was stunned. “It looks like a real car!”

“It is a real car.”

“Did he use a shrink ray on a real car to make it so small?”

Jumin’s brows knit together in confusion. “No… At least, I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of shrink rays that actually exists in the real world, but… I can’t say it’s impossible. I may have to ask my father directly. I forgot to ask where he got it. I was too excited to drive it.”

He didn’t seem to be a very talented driver if he had already crashed headfirst into a wall, but Jihyun decided to keep that to himself. He was very curious to know if shrink rays were real, and he hoped Jumin could get an answer.

“Your wall also took some damage,” Jumin pointed out. “There’s a crack in it now.”

“Oh that’s okay. It’s not too big.” It actually was kind of big, but Jihyun didn’t want Jumin to feel too bad.

“Won’t your father be angry when he finds out? I don’t want you to get in trouble when it’s not your fault.”

Jihyun paused to think, remembering how his nanny told him not to get in trouble.  _Would_  he get in trouble for this? Maybe he’d be in trouble if he didn’t say anything and his father found the crack later on and asked him about it. But if he told the truth, then wouldn’t Jumin be the one in trouble? It didn’t seem fair. Jumin seemed nice.

“My father isn’t here,” said Jihyun with a shrug. That was all he could think to say.

Jumin’s lips pressed into a straight line. “I’d still like to compensate you for the damage I’ve done. What will you accept as compensation?”

“Compensation?” To be honest, Jihyun didn’t know what that word meant. He tried to piece it together by considering the other words Jumin had used around it, and he guessed it might have something to do with making up for something done wrong.

Jumin watched him, waiting for an answer. Jihyun couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted. Whenever Chief Kim would go away for a longer time than expected, he always returned home with something to give to him. Oftentimes it was a toy, or a crystal figurine or glass charm from a foreign country. Last time, his father gave him a camera, and it was probably the most treasured of all the things he’d ever received.

Yet…nothing made up for his father’s constant absence. None of the things Jihyun owned made up for how empty his house always was and how small he always felt in it.

Maybe if he had someone to share all that space with, he might feel a little less alone.

“Will you be my friend?”

Jumin’s mouth slackened, like he wasn’t sure he heard him correctly. “That’s it?”

His tone made Jihyun wonder what kind of “compensation” Jumin had been expecting. Was he not asking for enough?

But after another moment’s consideration, Jumin nodded. “Fine. I’ll be your friend.”

He offered his hand again so they could shake on it, and Jihyun did so gladly. For the first time that day, he smiled. He was satisfied to see Jumin smiling too. He hoped Jumin meant it because he’d never had a friend before, and he liked the idea so much he didn’t want to let it go.

The sound of panicked screaming shattered the moment as Jihyun’s nanny suddenly appeared. The boys turned in unison and found themselves being scolded by the older woman, warning them of how much trouble they’d be in by both their fathers. She was angry at Jihyun for leaving a mess in the sitting room, and now she was fuming at the sight of the crashed car and dented wall. It seemed there was no way to get out of being in trouble, no matter whose fault it was. Though Jihyun had never once gotten in trouble before and didn’t like the thought of his father being disappointed or upset with him, there was a first time for everything, and somehow he was comforted to know that Jumin was there right alongside him.

Jihyun didn’t see Jumin again until after his father returned from his business trip, but once Chief Kim’s head cooled from the news and he’d had an adult conversation with Chairman Han in regards to the situation, Jumin was allowed to visit Jihyun’s house for their first official play date. 

To Jihyun’s surprise and bewilderment, Jumin offered him a piece of paper that he’d written on, explaining that it was a contract laying out the terms of their friendship. Jihyun didn’t really understand the need for it, but he signed his name cheerfully, and Jumin signed his own underneath.

Jihyun had something for Jumin, too: the photograph he’d taken of him the day he crashed his car into his house. A reminder of how they met and, hopefully, a moment they’d treasure for years to come.

On the back of the picture, he wrote:

_To Jumin,_

_Thank you for being my friend._

_Jihyun_

His house felt much smaller whenever Jumin was around, and just right.


End file.
